Posts by nematoad

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Glad to be in the slow lane.

I adore my 1998 Mini Cooper S and having seen all this about "connected cars" and "infotainment" (ugh) as vectors for hacking has made me love it even more.

The thing I enjoy most about it is the fact that it's all about the driving. Fast responsive steering, excellent performance ( I still don't know how fast it goes as the speedo only goes up to 110 mph) and the sheer joy of the handling. So to see worries that the brakes, accelerator, airbag etc. could be tampered with in more modern cars does mean that I am grateful that I have a simple, uncomplicated little car instead of one of these "travelling computers" that seem to be in vogue at the moment.

OK, a Mini is not for everyone but I do think that the marketeers at the car makers have got too strong a hold on things and are pushing "shiny" at the expense of safety. Too many features, not enough thinking things through.

It may be a bad thing when a PC or laptop gets hacked but at least in most cases it won't be travelling down the motorway at 70mph when it does.

Gah!

"We are now looking to work with GP surgeries directly to support them in collecting the information needed about appointments."

What possible interest is there to anyone in that other than me and the doctor's surgery? I mean it's an arrangement between me and them.

It could be as others have said to gather data on how many appointments have been missed, but surely they could just ask the surgery "How many patients didn't turn up?" No need to ferret around with my data, identifiable or not .

Oh, and lastly: "De-identfied".

Using that sort of portmanteau word should be made an offence. Use "anonymise" if you must, though even that is a bloody ugly sin against the English language.

Re: Scotland?

Not just Scotland. Anywhere outside of what appears to be the tunnel vision of these researchers.

"Our cities will be much better to live in, our suburbs will be much better to live in."

And it's not just graffiti covering road signs, trees and bushes do as well, I don't suppose that has occurred to them. Then there's the concealed entrances to farms and the like, usually full of a whopping great tractor and trailer just pulling out into the main road.

Re: Mate is yur mate.

" Although I do have a couple of original EEEPC 701s under the sofa, which I always intended to put another distro on, just might get around to it now."

Yes do.

Crunchbang works well on a 701. I did upgrade to 1GB as I found 512MB made it a bit slow but otherwise it does all I ask of it. Which isn't a lot given the 7" screen but it's handy to take away on holiday.

" I want to say they're not that stupid or ignorant but obviously they were."

Why would you not describe them as they are? Not only that they have been acting in ways that are devious, underhand and mercenary. They obviously have no ethical standards at all and are solely concerned with making as much money as possible.

These character are the "enemy within". The scum of the earth and to start whining, about how their incompetence has made the world a more dangerous place defies belief.

Cor.

Phew, what a mess.

It looks to me as if MS have decided to throw everything at the wall and see what sticks. Having said that, habitual users of Windows may find it less confusing than I did just by looking at the screen shots and reading the description. I haven't used Windows since Win98SE.

I find myself in the unusual position of agreeing with Andrew Orlowski on one point. I cannot see how MS can have this all tidied up by the 29th, maybe the upgrade really is "free" because it's a beta release and MS know it.

Re: Cost Benefit Analysis?

"Your home system recognises its gone cheap cost it can blue-tooth/wifi into it... "

Except it doesn't work like that. In my case the power company decided that they would change my electro-mechanical electricity meter for a "smart" one. Result total failure, as we have no reliable mobile phone signal here, so that option was out of the door. I'm certainly not prepared to share my broadband with them so wi-fi is another non-starter. Outcome, a miserable little thing not much bigger than a matchbox that is almost impossible to read and which gives me no indication of how much power I'm using or if the photo-voltaic panels on the roof are running. At least my old meter did show how much electricity I was using.

So, this scheme has in my case already failed and I cannot see me getting a "smart" meter until they improve the connectivity to us here and that's another, expensive story.

Re: I see

"If home Windows is like Arch..."

Not really, I see it more like PCLinuxOS. A rolling release distro with a lot of easy to use tools.

Arch and Gentoo are for the hard-core enthusiasts, they take no prisoners and expect users to know what they are doing. PCLOS on the other hand is a bit more forgiving and Win 10 must be the same or I foresee tears before bedtime.

Re: Congratulations

Yes, well done and thank you.

I do find it a bit strange that Mr Brookson is rightfully honoured for his contributions to ensuring that our privacy is protected by one arm of the government whilst another is bleating about how encryption is going to mean the end of the world and that the sky will fall in.

Re: old cars

"My current car is 13 years old, still looks in good nick inside and out..."

My point exactly.

It's OK for those people who buy a new car every year but they don't make my Mini Cooper S any more and I'm damned if they force me to stop driving it just because everyone else is using auto-drive vehicles.

Keep your eyes on the road.

"Connected services meant drivers would be able to use all the apps they use outside their car, inside their car, while driving, he claimed."

Maybe not such a good idea as he seems to think. Watching what's going on outside the car is a lot more important than checking your e-mails or Twitter. If it's a risk to use a hands-free mobile when driving think what the distractions with the systems he's advocating could be.

Vorsprung durch techik? More like crunch durch techik.

No, thanks, I'll watch where I'm going and keep an eye out for idiots watching Youtube when behind the wheel.

Should keep it to themselves.

It has been said that the USA is not very good at exporting things.

Well, with this case they have managed to export something. The IP scam that has been clogging up the US courts and costing innocent people a lot of money and time. The most outrageous of these schemes being the Prenda Law affair.

With luck the cases in Singapore will not take as long to resolve though as it involves law firms and lawyers who can tell?

"In the very infrequent event that compensation is paid to foreign victims it will be paltry...the drone is the most expensive part..."

Spoken like a true accountant.

What you do not seem to see is that these foreign victims are actually real human beings, like you and me. I leave it to you to decide whether the victim's families would rather have the "compensation" however small or their loved one back, alive with them. I know which choice I would make. and it isn't the financial one.

Re: You know you've hit them where it hurts

"All we're left with is regurgitated PR, Op Ed, and showbiz fluff, and we deserved better."

I disagree.

If by "we" you mean the British public then "we" have got what we deserve in that "we" keep buying these shit sheets and thus encouraging them to keep printing all this propaganda. There have been a few notable exceptions to the depressing saga of the British press, the Telegraph's series on the MP's claims scandal being one and the Guardian's current series on Edward Snowden's leaks being another.

This current business I put down to where it all comes from. A Murdoch owned rag in cahoots with the Tory government. I would really like to see what the quid pro quo was for this.

The rest of your quote really does represent the majority of what comes from Murdoch's empire.

Re: What licence?

A couple of sayings come to mind with your comment.

"Give a dog a bad name..." and "As ye sow so shall ye reap."

MS has only itself to blame if people regard their offers with suspicion. They have behaved in a predatory, unethical and criminal manner too many times in the past to be taken at their word. We'll see but don't expect great cries of welcome from those who have been victims of MS's past behaviour

Looking a gift horse in the mouth.

"Oracle sought to make amends of a kind with Apache in 2011 by punting its OpenOffice productivity suite over the open-source project shop’s auspices."

A pretty back-handed way of saying sorry if you ask me. Oracle seeing that OpenOffice was not getting the support it once had and facing the competition from LibreOffice decided that it was not going to be profitable and decided to dump it. Apache was the chosen recipient.

Oracle were right in a way as OpenOffice seems to have become an irrelevance and most Linux distros moved over to LibreOffice pretty smartly.

Re: What the...?

1) England is not the UK, and it was a UK election not an English one.

2) The total percentage of the votes cast in the recent election (39.6) to the Conservatives means that 60.4% did not vote for all this austerity.

As for the "steady hands and smart minds" a quick look at the recent "Vote yes in the EU referendum or get sacked" fiasco seems to show neither. Unless that is you think that a death grip on the rudder of a ship heading for the rocks is "steady"

Re: Nope nope nope nope nope

"... I don't care how inferior other platforms are, if they are open..."

Well, if you are thinking about Gnu/Linux or any of the BSDs, then stop worrying. They are not inferior. They are different to what you may be used to, but for most tasks they are just as good and sometimes better. They are more secure, especially BSD, usually are better on under 'specced machines and you have a choice. Don't like one distro, then choose another. You are able, if you wish, to change things, inspect the source code and lastly, in most cases it won't cost you a penny to get all this stuff. What you will have to do is think about what you want to do and learn some new things. It's not hard and if you are like most here it won't be a problem, in fact it might be a pleasure.